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Epic Games

February 16, 2024

Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio changed its name to Epic Games.

Epic Games, Inc.
Headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, 2016
Formerly
  • Potomac Computer Systems
  • (1991–1992)
  • Epic MegaGames, Inc.
  • (1992–1999)
Company typePrivate
IndustryVideo games
Founded1991; 33 years ago (1991) in Potomac, Maryland, US
FounderTim Sweeney
Headquarters
Cary, North Carolina
,
US
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Products
Owners
Number of employees
4,000+ (2023[1])
SubsidiariesSee § Subsidiaries and divisions
Websiteepicgames.com
Footnotes / references
[2][3][4]

Epic Games developed Unreal Engine, a commercially available game engine which also powers its internally developed video games like Fortnite and the Unreal, Gears of War, and Infinity Blade series. In 2014, Unreal Engine was named the "most successful videogame engine" by Guinness World Records.[5]

Epic Games owns the game developers Psyonix, Mediatonic, and Harmonix, and operates studios in multiple locations around the world. While Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder, Tencent acquired a 48.4% outstanding stake, equating to 40% of total Epic, in the company in 2012, as part of an agreement aimed at moving Epic towards a games as a service model. Following the release of the popular Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017, the company gained additional investments that enabled it to expand its Unreal Engine offerings, establish esports events around Fortnite, and launch the Epic Games Store. As of April 2022, the company has a US$32 billion equity valuation.

On August 13, 2020, Epic released a version of Fortnite that included a permanent discount on V-bucks across all platforms (except iOS and Android devices) if they purchased directly through Epic, bypassing Apple and Google's storefronts. Both Apple and Google immediately delisted the game for violating the storefronts' terms of service by including their own storefront, which led Epic to file lawsuits against both companies the same day, accusing them of antitrust behavior in how they operate their app stores. While Apple was ultimately victorious in a bench trial in September 2021 and upheld through appeals, Google's actions were found to be monopolistic by a jury trial in December 2023.

History

Potomac Computer Systems (1991–1992)

Potomac Computer Systems was founded by Tim Sweeney in 1991.[6] At the time, Sweeney was studying mechanical engineering and living in a dorm at the University of Maryland. He frequently visited his parents, who lived in nearby Potomac, Maryland, where his personal computer, used for both work and leisure, was situated.[6] Out of this location, Sweeney started Potomac Computer Systems as a computer consulting business but later figured that it would be too much work he would have to put into keeping the business stable, and scrapped the idea.[6]

After finishing his game ZZT, Sweeney opted to re-use the Potomac Computer Systems name to release the game to the public in January 1991.[6][7] It was only with the unexpected success of ZZT, caused in most part by the easy modifiability of the game using Sweeney's custom ZZT-oop programming language,[8] that made Sweeney consider turning Potomac Computer Systems into a video game company.[6] ZZT was sold through bulletin board systems, while all orders were fulfilled by Sweeney's father, Paul Sweeney.[9] The game sold several thousand copies as of May 2009, and Paul Sweeney still lived at the former Potomac Computer Systems address at the time, fulfilling all orders that eventually came by mail.[6][9] The final copy of ZZT was shipped by Paul Sweeney in November 2013.[9]

Epic MegaGames (1992–1999)

 
Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney

In early 1992, Sweeney found himself and his new-found video game company in a business where larger studios, such as Apogee Software and id Software, were dominant, and he had to find a more serious name for his.[6] As such, Sweeney came up with "Epic MegaGames", a name which incorporated "Epic" and "Mega" to make it sound like it represented a fairly large company (such as Apogee Software), although he was its only employee.[6] Sweeney soon underwent searching for a business partner, and eventually caught up with Mark Rein, who previously quit his job at id Software and moved to Toronto, Ontario.[8][6] Rein worked remotely from Toronto, and primarily handled sales, marketing and publishing deals; business development that Sweeney found to have significantly contributed to the company's growth.[6] Some time this season, the company soon had 20 employees consisting of programmers, artists, designers and composers.[10] Among them was the 17-year old Cliff Bleszinski, who joined the company after submitting his game Dare to Dream to Sweeney.[11] The following year, they had over 30 employees.[12]

In 1996, Epic MegaGames produced a shareware isometric shooter called Fire Fight, developed by Polish studio Chaos Works. It was published by Electronic Arts.[13] By 1997, Epic MegaGames had 50 people working for them worldwide.[14] In 1998, Epic MegaGames released Unreal, a 3D first-person shooter co-developed with Digital Extremes, which expanded into a series of Unreal games. The company also began to license the core technology, the Unreal Engine, to other game developers.[15]

Epic Games (1999–present)

Unreal and personal computer games (1999–2006)

In February 1999, Epic MegaGames announced that they had moved their headquarters to a new location in Cary, North Carolina, and would henceforth be known as simply Epic Games.[16] Rein explained that "Unreal was first created by developers who were scattered across the world, eventually, the team came together to finish the game and that's when the real magic started. The move to North Carolina centralizes Epic, bringing all of the company's talented developers under one roof."[16] Furthermore, Sweeney stated that the "Mega" part of the name was dropped because they no longer wanted to pretend to be a big company, as was the original intention of the name when it was a one-man team.[6] The follow-up game, Unreal Tournament, shipped to critical acclaim the same year,[17] at which point the studio had 13 employees.[18]

The company launched the Make Something Unreal competition in 2004, aiming to reward video game developers who create mods using the Unreal game engine. Tripwire Interactive won US$80,000 in cash and computer hardware prizes over the course of the contest in the first contest in 2004.[19][20]

Gears of War and console games (2006–2012)

Around 2006, the personal computer video game market was struggling with copyright infringement in the form of software piracy, and it became difficult to make single-player games, elements that had been part of Epic's business model to that point. The company decided to shift focus into developing console systems, a move which Sweeney called the start of the third major iteration of the company, "Epic 3.0".[21] In 2006, Epic released the Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War, which became a commercial success for the company, grossing about $100 million off a $12 million budget.[22][21] A year later, the company released Unreal Tournament 3 for PC and acquired a majority share in People Can Fly.[23][24]

In 2008, Epic Games released Gears of War 2,[25] selling over three million copies within the first month of its release.[26]

Epic Games released on September 1, 2010 Epic Citadel as a tech demo to demonstrate the Unreal Engine 3 running on Apple iOS, within Adobe Flash Player Stage3D and using HTML5 WebGL technologies. It was also released for Android on January 29, 2013. Epic Games worked on an iOS game, Infinity Blade,[27] which was released on December 9, 2010.[28] The third game in the series, Gears of War 3, came out in 2011.[29]

In 2011, Epic's subsidiary Titan Studios was dissolved.[30] At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Epic Games announced their new game Fortnite.[31]

In June 2012, Epic announced that it was opening up a new studio, Epic Baltimore, made up of members of 38 Studios' Big Huge Games.[32] Epic Baltimore was renamed to Impossible Studios in August 2012.[33] However, the studio ended up closing its doors in February 2013.[34][35]

Epic fully acquired People Can Fly in August 2012, rebranding them as Epic Games Poland in November 2013 as they began work on Fortnite alongside Epic.[36] Epic alongside People Can Fly made one last game in the Gears of War series that served as a prequel to the other games, Gears of War: Judgement, which was released in 2013. At this point, Epic had considered developing a fourth main title for Gears of War, but estimated that its budget would be at least $100 million.[22] Additionally, they had suggested the idea of a multiplayer-only version of Gears of War that featured improved versions of maps based on user feedback, similar to the concept behind Unreal Tournament, but Microsoft rejected this idea. Epic recognized the troubles of being held to the business objectives of a publisher and began to shift the company again.[21]

Games as a service and Tencent shareholding (2012–2018)

An inside look at Epic Games, 2015

Coupled with their desire to move away from being beholden to a publisher, Epic Games observed that the video game industry was shifting to a games-as-a-service model (GaaS). Sweeney stated, "There was an increasing realization that the old model wasn't working anymore and that the new model was looking increasingly like the way to go."[21] In an attempt to gain more GaaS experience, they made an agreement with Chinese Tencent, who had several games under their banner (including Riot Games' League of Legends) operating successfully as games as a service.[37] In exchange for Tencent's help, Tencent acquired approximately 48.4% of Epic then issued share capital, equating to 40% of total Epic – inclusive of both stock and employee stock options, for $330 million in June 2012. Tencent Holdings has the right to nominate directors to the board of Epic Games and thus counts as an associate of the Group.[3] However, Sweeney stated that Tencent otherwise has very little control on the creative output of Epic Games.[21] Sweeney considered the partial acquisition by Tencent as the start of "Epic 4.0", the fourth major iteration of the company, allowing the company to be more agile in the video game marketplace.[21][38]

Around this point, Epic had about 200 employees.[21] A number of high-profile staff left the company months after the Tencent deal was announced for various reasons. Some notable departures included:[39]

  • Cliff Bleszinski, then the design director, announced he was leaving Epic Games in October 2012 after 20 years with the company. His official reason was "It's time for a much-needed break".[40] Bleszinski later stated that he had become "jaded" about the gaming industry in the lead-up to Tencent's involvement. After Tencent's investment, Bleszinski attempted to renegotiate his contract but failed to come to terms, making him think about retirement instead. He opted to stop coming to work, spending his time at his beach house, eventually leading Sweeney to come down and have a heart-to-heart discussion with Bleszinski on the new direction Epic was going, and asking him to make a firm decision regarding his commitment to Epic. Bleszinski opted to write his resignation letter the next day.[41] After about two years, Bleszinski started Boss Key Productions in 2014.[citation needed]
  • President Mike Capps announced his retirement in December 2012, and cited as reasons the birth of a baby boy he was having with his wife and his plans to be a stay-at-home dad.[42] He subsequently announced quitting his advisory role as well as his affiliation with the company in March 2013.[43]
  • Rod Fergusson, who had been a lead developer for the Gears of War series, left Epic in August 2012. Fergusson stated that he had seen the direction that the Tencent acquisition would have taken the company, and was not interested in the free-to-play style of games but instead wanted to continue developing a "AAA, big-narrative, big-story, big-impact game".[44] Fergusson briefly joined Irrational Games, owned by 2K Games, to help complete BioShock Infinite. While there, Fergusson talked with 2K about potentially continuing the Gears of War series, leading to talks between 2K Games, Epic, and Microsoft.[21] As a result, Microsoft acquired the rights to Gears of War on January 27, 2014, eventually assigned those to Microsoft Game Studios; Fergusson moved to Black Tusk Studios, owned by Microsoft Game Studios, to take on lead development for a new Gears title, with the studio being rebranded as The Coalition. The first game since the acquisition, Gears of War 4, was released in October 2016.[45][46]
  • Adrian Chmielarz, the founder of People Can Fly, who joined Epic when his studio was acquired earlier in 2012, decided to leave after Tencent's acquisition, stating that he and other former People Can Fly members did not believe the free-to-play games as a service direction fit their own personal vision or direction they wanted to go. Chmielarz and these others left Epic in late 2012 to form The Astronauts.[41]
  • Lee Perry, a lead designer on both Unreal and Gears of War series, felt that Epic has started to grow too large to maintain a role as an eccentric game developer. Coupled with the studio's need for more management to support the games as a service model, Perry felt that their creative freedom would become limited. He and five other senior people left Epic to form a new studio, Bitmonster.[41]

Epic continued its goal to deliver games as a service following these departures. Fortnite was to serve as their testbed for living games, but with the shifts in staff, and its engine from Unreal Engine 3 to 4, its release suffered some setbacks. Epic started additional projects; the free-to-play and community-developed Unreal Tournament, first announced in 2014,[47][48] and the free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena game Paragon, launched in 2016 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4.[49] Epic also released a remastered version of Shadow Complex for newer consoles and computers in 2015,[50][51] and their first foray into virtual reality with the release of Robo Recall for the Oculus Rift.[52][53]

The investment infusion from Tencent allowed Epic Games to relicense the Unreal Engine 4 engine in March 2015 to be free for all users to develop with, with Epic taking 5% royalties on games developed with the engine.[54]

In June 2015, Epic agreed to allow Epic Games Poland's departure from the company and sold its shares in the studio; the studio reverted to their former name, People Can Fly. The Bulletstorm IP was retained by People Can Fly who has since launched a remastered version called Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition on April 7, 2017, published by Gearbox Software.[55][56]

Fortnite success (2018–present)

 
Epic's Fortnite exhibition space at E3 2018

By July 2017, Fortnite was finally in a state for public play.[57] Epic launched the title through a paid early access then, with a full free-to-play release expected in 2018.[58] Following on the popularity of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a battle royale game released earlier in 2017, Epic developed a variant of Fortnite called Fortnite Battle Royale, which was released in September 2017[59] as a free-to-play title across computer, console, and mobile platforms. Fortnite Battle Royale quickly gained an audience, amassing over 125 million players by May 2018 with estimates of having earned over $1 billion by July 2018 through microtransactions, including its battle pass system. Epic Games, which had been valued at around $825 million at the time of Tencent's acquisition, was estimated to be worth $4.5 billion in July 2018 due to Fortnite Battle Royale, and expected to surpass $8.5 billion by the end of 2018 with projected growth of the game.[60] Player count continued to expand when Epic broke new ground by convincing Sony to change its stance on cross-platform play allowing players on any device to compete with each other in Fortnite Battle Royale.[61] Fortnite has drawn nearly 250 million players as of March 2019.[62]

Fortnite's commercial success enabled Epic to make several changes to its other product offerings. In July 2018, it reduced the revenue cut that it took for assets sold on the Unreal Engine Marketplace from 30% to 12%.[63] Epic launched the Epic Games Store digital storefront to compete with services like Steam and GOG.com, not only taking a 12% cut of revenue compared to the industry standard of 30%, but also eliminated the 5% cut for games using the Unreal engine sold via the storefront.[64] However the company also refocused its development efforts to provide more support for Unreal and Fortnite by ending support for Paragon[65] and Unreal Tournament.[66]

The financial success of Fortnite brought additional investment into Epic Games. Epic Games was one of eleven companies selected to be part of the Disney Accelerator program in 2017, providing Epic equity investment and access to some of Disney's executives, and potential opportunity to work with Disney in the future. Disney had selected both Epic and aXiomatic as potential leads in the growing esports arena.[67]

Epic's has used its windfall to support its products. In January 2019, following a dispute between Improbable and Unity Technologies over changes to the acceptable uses of the Unity game engine, Epic announced it was partnering with Improbable to launch a $25 million fund to help bring developers they believe affected by these changes towards solutions that are more open and would have fewer service compatibilities.[68] Epic launched a $100 million prize pool in February 2019 for Fortnite-related esports activities that it plans to run from 2019 onward.[69] To expand its esports initiatives, Epic Games hired Nate Nanzer from Blizzard Entertainment and their commissioner of the Overwatch League in May 2019.[70] At the 2019 Game Developers Conference, Epic announced it was launching a $100 million MegaGrants initiative, allowing anyone to apply for up to $500,000 in funding to support game development using the Unreal Engine or for any project, even if not directly games-related, that would benefit the Unreal Engine.[71] One of the first major funded entities under this was the Blender Foundation in July 2019, having received $1.2 million from the MegaGrants funding, to help them to improve and professionalize their Blender tools for 3D art creation.[72]

Epic Games was given the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Special Award in June 2019 for its past and continuing developments for the Unreal Engine,[73] a software which also earned it the Engineering Excellence Award from the Hollywood Professional Association.[74]

Epic announced in March 2020 it was establishing a new multi-platform publishing label, Epic Games Publishing. Alongside this, the label had announced three deals with developers Remedy Entertainment, Playdead and GenDesign in which Epic would fully fund development and publishing (including employee salaries, quality assurance, localization, and marketing) of one or more games from each studio, but leaving full creative control and IP rights to the studio, and sharing profits, following Epic's recouping of its investment, 50/50 with the studio.[75][76] The company expanded their publishing options in October 2021 with Spry Fox and Eyes Out.[77]

Unreal Engine 5 was announced on May 13, 2020, with plans for an early 2022 release. Alongside this announcement, Epic released its Epic Online Services, a free SDK toolset for online matchmaking and other similar cross-platform play support features based on Fortnite. Epic further waived all Unreal license fees retroactively for games up through the first $1 million in revenue, regardless of how they were published, retroactively starting from January 1, 2020.[78]

Bloomberg reported that Epic was nearing a $17 billion valuation in June 2020 once it had completed a new $750 million investing round from its previous investors and newcomings T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Baillie Gifford.[79] The company partnered with Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. to acquire distribution rights for Inception, Batman Begins and The Prestige as part of "Movie Nite" on Fortnite's "Party Royale" island. The film live streams were based on a user's country.[80]

Across July and August, Epic raised an additional $1.78 billion in capital investment, bringing the company's post-money equity valuation to $17.3 billion.[81][82] This included a $250 million investment from Sony, approximately a 1.4% stake in the company. The deal continues the two companies' technology collaboration after they had worked together on the development of Unreal Engine 5, but does not commit Epic to any exclusivity to the Sony PlayStation platform.[83][84] Sweeney said that Sony had started talking with Epic about investing following the demonstration of the Unreal Engine 5 in May 2020.[85]

Epic purchased Cary Towne Center in Cary, North Carolina, in January 2021, which had been scheduled to be closed and demolished after 2020, to be their new headquarters and campus, with the conversion to be complete by 2024.[86]

Epic unveiled its MetaHuman Creator project in February 2021. Based on the technology from 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, and Quixel, the MetaHuman Creator is a browser-based application to allow game developers to create realistic human characters within a short amount of time starting from various presets, and then can be exported as pre-made models and animation files ready for use in Unreal Engine.[87]

Epic announced a partnership with Cesium in March 2021 to bring its 3D geospatial data as a free add-on into the Unreal Engine.[88]

In April 2021, Epic completed another $1 billion round of funding to support the company's "long-term vision for the metaverse", putting the company's valuation at $28.7 billion. The round of funding included another $200 million strategic investment from Sony.[89][90] Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder with these additional investments.[89]

The Information reported that Epic Games was launching a new scripted entertainment division in October 2021, bringing on three former executives from Lucasfilm to manage it, with initial plans for a Fortnite film.[91]

In February 2022 Epic Games announced that at least half a billion accounts have been created on its platform.[92]

Epic released the initial beta version of RealityScan, a mobile app that uses the tools from Capturing Reality and Quixel, in April 2022. RealityScan allows users to create 3D models that can be imported into Sketchfab using photos taken by the user.[93]

Epic received another $1 billion each from Sony and from Kirkbi, the parent company of The Lego Group, in April 2022 for continued support of building out Epic's metaverse.[94] These investments gave Kirkbi 3% ownership and increased Sony's to 4.9%.[95] With these investments, Epic had an estimated valuation of $32 billion.[96] Epic and Lego also announced their partnership to build a child-friendly space in the metaverse that same month.[97]

The company announced in September 2023 that it was laying off 870 employees, along with divesting in Bandcamp to Songtradr and spinning off SuperAwesome into its own company. Sweeney said this move was needed to rein in spending, and did not anticipate there would be further layoffs in the future.[98] Mediatonic reported a significant number of layoffs from their team, but remained part of Epic.[99]

On February 7, 2024, Epic Games received a $1.5 billion investment from The Walt Disney Company. Disney plans to co-develop new games and an "entertainment universe" encompassing its properties with Epic.[100]

Acquisitions

In 2008, Epic acquired Utah based Chair Entertainment, developer of Undertow.[101][102] Summer 2009 saw the launch of Chair's Shadow Complex, an adventure game inspired by the Metroid series.[103]

Epic announced in October 2018 that it had acquired $1.25 billion in investment from seven firms: KKR, ICONIQ Capital, Smash Ventures, aXiomatic, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The firms join Tencent, Disney, and Endeavor as minority shareholders in Epic.[104][105] With the investment, Epic Games was estimated to have a nearly $15 billion valuation in October 2018.[106]

Besides expanding support for Fortnite and the Epic Games Store, these investments allowed Epic to acquire additional firms. In January 2018, it was announced that Epic had acquired Cloudgine, a developer of cloud-based gaming software.[107] The company also announced the acquisition of Kamu, a firm that offered anti-cheat software called Easy Anti-Cheat, in October 2018.[108][109] A year later, in January 2019, Epic acquired 3Lateral and Agog Labs. 3Lateral is known for its "digital human" creations, using a combination of digital technology, motion capture, and other tools to create photo-realistic human subjects in real-time. Epic plans to add some of 3Lateral's features to the Unreal Engine.[110] Agog had developed SkookumScript, a platform for scripting events in video games; on the announcement of this acquisition, Agog stated they will stop the development of SkookumScript to work more on Unreal Engine scripting support.[111]

Epic acquired Psyonix, the developer of Rocket League, in May 2019. Epic and Psyonix have had a past history, as Psyonix was originally founded a few miles from Epic's headquarters and had contributed to Epic's Unreal Tournament.[112][113] Besides ongoing support for Rocket League, Psyonix developed an arcade-style car racing game inside of Fortnite, named Rocket Racing, which was added in December 2023.[114]

Epic acquired the Twinmotion visualization tool used in architectural design in May 2019 from Abvent, and which they plan to expand and incorporate into their Unreal Engine offerings.[115][116] Epic acquired Life on Air, the developers behind Houseparty, a social networking service, in June 2019. The monetary terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.[117] Epic later shuttered Houseparty's app in October 2021, though the team behind it was continuing to develop social apps for Epic's platforms.[118]

In November 2019, Epic acquired Quixel, the world's largest photogrammetry asset library which makes 3D models of objects based on real-world high-definition photography. Epic plans to open Quixel's existing library of models to users of Unreal Engine, while the Quixel staff will continue to build out its assets within Epic.[119][120] The company acquired Cubic Motion, a studio that provides highly detailed digital facial animations for both films and video games, in March 2020.[121]

Epic acquired SuperAwesome, a firm that has developed services to support children-safe games and services around games, in September 2020, as to incorporate these elements more into Epic's portfolio and to offer to other developers, particularly for games built around Epic's vision of metaverse games.[122][123]

Epic acquired the digital facial animation firm Hyprsense in November 2020.[124]

In January 2021, Epic acquired RAD Game Tools, a company that makes a variety of middleware solutions for video game development which Epic plans to incorporate into the Unreal Engine. RAD's tools will still remain available outside of Unreal as well.[125]

In March 2021, Epic announced it was acquiring the Tonic Games Group, which includes developers Mediatonic and Fortitude Games. Mediatonic's Fall Guys, a major success during 2020, would remain available on Steam while Epic would help to bring it to additional platforms.[126] Epic buying Tonic Games Group falls under the company's broader plans of creating its own metaverse.[127] Additionally in March, Epic acquired Capturing Reality, the developers of RealityCapture, a photogrammetry suite that can create 3D models from numerous photographs. Epic plans to integrate RealityCapture into the Unreal Engine.[128]

Epic Games acquired ArtStation, a professional artists' marketplace, in April 2021. As part of the acquisition, ArtStation members would gain access to Epic's tools and support such as the Unreal Engine, while the ArtStation marketplace will reduce its take on purchases from 30% to 12%.[129] In July 2021, Epic acquired Sketchfab, a marketplace for 3D models. As with ArtStation, the acquisition allowed Sketchfab to reduce its pricing structure, lowering its revenue cut on purchases to 12% and making their Sketchfab Plus level of membership free.[130]

In November 2021, Epic Games acquired Harmonix, a music game developer, for undisclosed terms.[131] Harmonix continued to support their existing games including Rock Band 4 and Fuser while building out Fortnite's musical experiences, adding a Fortnite Festival mode that mimics the note-matching gameplay of Rock Band in December 2023,[114] and Epic's larger metaverse plans,[132]

Epic acquired the indie music platform Bandcamp in March 2022. Bandcamp was expected to remain independently operated under Epic while gaining the benefits of Epic's backend services.[133][134] In April 2023, Epic acquired Brazilian studio Aquiris and changed its name to Epic Games Brasil, with the intention to be used in Fortnite.[135] In September 2023, Epic sold Bandcamp to music licensing company Songtradr.[136]

Products

Video games

Main article: List of games by Epic Games

Epic Games is known for games such as ZZT developed by founder Tim Sweeney, various shareware titles including Jazz Jackrabbit and Epic Pinball, the Unreal video game series, which is used as a showcase for its Unreal Engine, the Gears of War series which is now owned by The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios, Infinity Blade, Shadow Complex, Bulletstorm, and Fortnite.[citation needed]

Unreal Engine

Main article: Unreal Engine

Epic is the proprietor of five successful game engines in the video game industry. Each Unreal Engine has a complete feature set of graphical rendering, sound processing, and physics that can be widely adapted to fit the specific needs of a game developer that does not want to code their own engine from scratch. The five engines Epic has created are Unreal Engine 1, Unreal Engine 2 (including its 2.5 and 2.X releases), Unreal Engine 3, Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5. Epic also provides support to the Unreal marketplace, a digital storefront for creators to sell Unreal assets to other developers. Further, since 2019, Epic has provided support for filmmakers which have utilized the Unreal Engine to create virtual sets for productions such as The Mandalorian,[137] and will be backing major animated feature film production using Unreal, starting with Gilgamesh with studios Hook Up, DuermeVela and FilmSharks.[138]

Epic Games Store

Main article: Epic Games Store

Epic announced its own Epic Games Store, an open digital storefront for games, on December 4, 2018, which launched a few days later with The Game Awards 2018 presentation. Differing from Valve's Steam storefront, which takes 30% of revenues (30/70 revenue-sharing agreement) from the sale of a game, the Epic Game Store will take 12%, as well as foregoing the 5% for games developed in the Unreal Engine, anticipating that these lower revenue-sharing agreements will draw developers to it.[139][140]

Epic Online Services

Epic Online Services is a free SDK based on Epic's Fortnite code that allows developers to implement cross-platform play features in their games, including matchmaking, friends lists, leaderboards, and achievements, with support for Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android systems. It was first released for all in May 2020.[78] Support for anti-cheat and voice chat was added in June 2021.[141]

Productivity products

Other productivity products include ArtStation, Sketchfab, Twinmotion, RealityCapture, RealityScan and Quixel. Epic and Autodesk partnered in September 2022, making Twinmotion available to Revit subscribers.[142]

The MetaHuman Creator is a project based on technology from three companies acquired by Epic—3Lateral, Cubic Motion, and Quixel—to allow developers to quickly create realistic human characters that can then be exported for use within Unreal.[143] Through partnership with Cesium, Epic plans to offer a free plugin to provide 3D geospatial data for Unreal users, allowing them to recreate any part of the mapped surface of Earth.[144] Epic will include RealityCapture, a product it acquired with its acquisition of Capturing Reality that can generate 3D models of any object from a collection of photographs taken of it from multiple angles,[145] and the various middleware tools offered by Epic Game Tools.

Subsidiaries and divisions

Locations

Name Location Founded Acquired Ref(s).
Epic Games Australia Burwood, Australia 2018 — [146]
Epic Games Brasil Porto Alegre, Brazil 2007 2023 [147]
Epic Games China[a] Shanghai, China 2006 — [148]
Epic Games Germany Berlin, Germany 2016 [149][150]
Epic Games Japan Yokohama, Japan 2010 [151][152][153]
Epic Games Korea Seoul, South Korea 2009 [154][155]
Epic Games Montreal Montreal, Canada 2018 [156]
Epic Games Publishing — 2020 [157]
Epic Games Seattle Bellevue, Washington, US 2012 [158][159][160]
Epic Games Stockholm Stockholm, Sweden 2018 [161]
Epic Games San Francisco San Francisco, California, US 2012
Epic Games UK[b] Sunderland, England 2014 [162][163][164]

Subsidiaries

Name Area Location Founded Acquired Ref(s).
3Lateral Motion capture digitization Novi Sad, Serbia 2008 2019 [110]
ArtStation Professional artist marketplace Montreal, Canada 2014 2021 [129]
Capturing Reality Photogrammetry software Bratislava, Slovakia 2015 2021 [128]
Cubic Motion Facial animation Manchester, England 2009 2020 [121]
Harmonix Music game developer Boston, Massachusetts 1995 2021 [131]
Psyonix Video game development San Diego, US 2000 2019 [112][113]
Quixel Photogrammetry assets Uppsala, Sweden 2011 2019 [119][120]
Epic Game Tools (formerly RAD Game Tools) Game middleware Bellevue, Washington 1988 2021 [125]
Sketchfab 3D model marketplace Paris, France 2012 2021 [130]
Tonic Games Group (Mediatonic) Video game development London, England 2005 2021 [126]

Former

Name Location Founded Acquired Divested Fate Ref.
Agog Labs Vancouver, Canada 2013 2019 Software development moved internally to Epic Games. [111]
Bandcamp Oakland, US 2008 2022 2023 Sold to Songtradr [133]
Chair Entertainment Salt Lake City, US 2005 2008 Unknown Closed
Cloudgine Edinburgh, Scotland 2012 2018 Software development moved internally to Epic Games. [107]
Hyprsense Burlingame, California 2015 2020 Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
Impossible Studios Baltimore, US 2012 — 2013 Closed [165]
Kamu Helsinki, Finland 2013 2018 Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
Life on Air San Francisco, US 2012 2019 Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
People Can Fly (Epic Games Poland) Warsaw, Poland 2002 2012 2015 Sold to management [166]
RAD Games Tools Kirkland, Washington, US 1988 2021 Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
SuperAwesome London, England 2013 2020 2023 Spun off [122]

Legal issues

See also: Fortnite Battle Royale § Past and ongoing concerns

Litigation with Silicon Knights

On July 19, 2007, Canadian game studio Silicon Knights sued Epic Games for failure to "provide a working game engine", causing the Ontario-based game developer to "experience considerable losses".[167] The suit alleged that Epic Games was "sabotaging" Unreal Engine 3 licensees. Epic's licensing document stated that a working version of the engine would be available within six months of the Xbox 360 developer kits being released. Silicon Knights claimed that Epic missed this deadline and that when a working version of the engine was eventually released, the documentation was insufficient. The game studio also claimed Epic had withheld vital improvements to the game engine, claiming they were game-specific, while also using licensing fees to fund the development of its own titles rather than the engine itself.[168]

In August 2007, Epic Games counter-sued Silicon Knights, alleging the studio was aware when it signed on that certain features of Unreal Engine 3 were still in development and that components would continue to be developed and added as Epic completed work on Gears of War. Therefore, in a statement, Epic said that "SK knew when it committed to the licensing agreement that Unreal Engine 3 may not meet its requirements and may not be modified to meet them".[169] Additionally, the counter-suit claimed that Silicon Knights had "made unauthorized use of Epic's Licensed Technology" and had "infringed and otherwise violated Epic's intellectual property rights, including Epic's copyrighted works, trade secrets, know how and confidential information" by incorporating Unreal Engine 3 code into its own engine, the Silicon Knights Engine.[169] Furthermore, Epic asserted the Canadian developer broke the contract when it employed this derivative work in an internal title and a second game with Sega,[170] a partnership for which it never received a license fee.[171]

On May 30, 2012, Epic Games defeated Silicon Knights' lawsuit and won its counter-suit for $4.45 million on grounds of copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of contract,[172] an injury award that was later doubled due to prejudgment interest, attorneys' fees and costs.[173] Consistent with Epic's counterclaims, the presiding judge, James C. Dever III, stated that Silicon Knights had "deliberately and repeatedly copied thousands of lines of Epic Games' copyrighted code, and then attempted to conceal its wrongdoing by removing Epic Games' copyright notices and by disguising Epic Games' copyrighted code as Silicon Knights' own".[173] Dever stated that evidence against Silicon Knights was "overwhelming", as it not only copied functional code but also "non-functional, internal comments Epic Games' programmers had left for themselves".[173]

As a result, on November 7, 2012, Silicon Knights was directed by the court to destroy all game code derived from Unreal Engine 3, all information from licensee-restricted areas of Epic's Unreal Engine documentation website, and to permit Epic Games access to the company's servers and other devices to ensure these items have been removed. In addition, the studio was instructed to recall and destroy all unsold retail copies of games built with Unreal Engine 3 code, including Too Human, X-Men Destiny, The Sandman, The Box/Ritualyst, and Siren in the Maelstrom (the latter three titles were projects never released, or even officially announced).[174]

On May 16, 2014, Silicon Knights filed for bankruptcy and a Certificate of Appointment was issued by the office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, with Collins Barrow Toronto Limited being appointed as trustee in bankruptcy.[175]

Apple and Google disputes

Main articles: Epic Games v. Apple and Epic Games v. Google

Since as early as 2017, Tim Sweeney had questioned the need for digital storefronts like Valve's Steam, Apple's iOS App Store, and Google Play, to take a 30% revenue sharing cut, and argued that when accounting for current rates of content distribution and other factors needed, a revenue cut of 8% should be sufficient to run any digital storefront profitably.[176] When Epic brought Fortnite Battle Royale to mobile devices, the company initially offered a sideloaded package for Android systems to bypass the Google Play store, but eventually also made it a store app.[177][178][179]

On August 13, 2020, Epic Games updated Fortnite across all platforms, including the iOS and Android versions, to reduce the price of "V-Bucks" (the in-game currency) by 20% if they purchased directly from Epic. For iOS and Android users, if they purchased through the Apple or Google storefront, they were not given this discount, as Epic said they could not extend the discount due to the 30% revenue cut taken by Apple and Google.[180] Within hours, both Apple and Google had removed Fortnite from their storefronts stating the means of bypassing their payment systems violated the terms of service.[181][182] Epic immediately filed separate lawsuits against Apple and Google for antitrust and anticompetitive behavior in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.[183] Epic did not seek monetary damages in either case but instead was "seeking injunctive relief to allow fair competition in these two key markets that directly affect hundreds of millions of consumers and tens of thousands, if not more, of third-party app developers."[184] In comments on social media the next day, Sweeney said that they undertook the actions as "we're fighting for the freedom of people who bought smartphones to install apps from sources of their choosing, the freedom for creators of apps to distribute them as they choose, and the freedom of both groups to do business directly. The primary opposing argument is: 'Smartphone markers [sic] can do whatever they want.' This is an awful notion. We all have rights, and we need to fight to defend our rights against whoever would deny them."[185]

Apple responded to the lawsuit that it would terminate Epic's developer accounts by August 28, 2020, leading Epic to file a motion for a preliminary injunction to force Apple to return Fortnite to the App Store and prevent them from terminating Epic's developer accounts, as the latter action would leave Epic unable to update the Unreal Engine for any changes to iOS or macOS and leave developers that relied on Unreal at risk.[186][187] The court granted the preliminary injunction against Apple from terminating the developer accounts as Epic had shown "potential significant damage to both the Unreal Engine platform itself, and to the gaming industry generally", but refused to grant the injunction related to Fortnite as "The current predicament appears of [Epic's] own making."[188] In September 2020, Epic Games, together with thirteen other companies, launched the Coalition for App Fairness, which aimed for better conditions for the inclusion of apps into app stores.[189]

U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued her first ruling on Epic Games v. Apple on September 10, 2021.[190] Rogers found in favor of Apple on nine of ten counts brought up against them in the case, including Epic's charges related to Apple's 30% revenue cut and Apple's prohibition against third-party marketplaces on the iOS environment.[191] Rogers did rule against Apple on the final charge related to anti-steering provisions, and issued a permanent injunction that, in 90 days from the ruling, blocked Apple from preventing developers from linking app users to other storefronts from within apps to complete purchases or from collecting information within an app, such as an email, to notify users of these storefronts.[192][193] Rogers' ruling was upheld at the Ninth Circuit on appeals, and the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case, leaving Rogers' order against Apple in place.[194]

Google initially sought to negotiate with Epic but later filed their own countersuit against Epic for breach of contract. The Google case was set as a jury trial, held in November and December 2023. Prior to this, other groups had filed their own lawsuits against Google for similar reasons as Epic, including a coalition of states and the Match Group, but these were settled just ahead of the trial.[195][196] The jury found for Epic on all claims made, determining that Google maintained a monopoly on the Android marketplace by how it managed the Play Store and used its leverage as a big tech firm to make deal with partners, including some deals made as a result of the earlier settlements. A second phase of this trial to determine remedies is scheduled to occur in January 2024.[197]

FTC child privacy settlement

In December 2022, Epic Games was fined a combined $520 million after the Federal Trade Commission accused the company of separate accounts related to Fortnite, one for violating COPPA related to children's privacy by collecting personal data without parent or guardian consent, exposing children and teens to potential harassment, and a second related to misleading users into making unwanted purchases while playing the game.[198][199][200][201] Epic Games said "No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here. The laws have not changed, but their application has evolved and long-standing industry practices are no longer enough. We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players. Over the past few years, we've been making changes to ensure our ecosystem meets the expectations of our players and regulators, which we hope will be a helpful guide for others in our industry."[202]

Criticism

Since the partial investment by the Chinese company Tencent, some consumers have become wary of Epic Games' reliability and use of their data, particularly in relationship with the Epic Games Store. These concerns have been connected to broader issues of general distrust of the Chinese government and Chinese corporations among some Western video game players. Epic has stated that Tencent does not have access to any of this private data nor provides this to the Chinese government.[203][204]

In late March 2020, accusations began circulating on social media that the Epic Games social networking app Houseparty led to other services such as Netflix and Spotify being hacked. However, both Epic and Life on Air claimed this was a smear campaign against its product and offered a $1 million bounty for anyone able to substantiate their claim.[205][206][207]

Notes

  1. ^ Additional studio in Suzhou
  2. ^ Additional studios in Guildford, Leamington Spa and Newcastle

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Further reading

  • Keighley, Geoffrey. . GameSpot. Archived from the original on May 19, 2001.
  • Berardini, César A. (June 30, 2005). . TeamXbox. Archived from the original on July 3, 2005.
  • Porter, Will (October 26, 2007). "The Epic tradition". GamesRadar.
  • Blancato, Joe (May 13, 2008). . The Escapist. Archived from the original on June 3, 2020. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
  • Edwards, Benj (May 25, 2009). "From The Past To The Future: Tim Sweeney Talks". Gamasutra.
  • Totilo, Stephen (December 7, 2011). "The Quiet Tinkerer Who Makes Games Beautiful Finally Gets His Due". Kotaku.
  • Plante, Chris (April 2, 2012). "Better with age: A history of Epic Games". Polygon.
  • Freeman, Will (August 12, 2013). "Development Legends: An Unreal tale". MCV.
  • Crecente, Brian (May 1, 2016). "Their future is Epic: The evolution of a gaming giant". Polygon.
  • Huddleston, Tom Jr. (August 9, 2018). "'Fortnite' launched battle royale a year ago today – here's how the company behind the billion-dollar game was founded by a college kid". CNBC.
  • Griffith, Erin (August 25, 2020). "To Fight Apple and Google's Grip, Fortnite Creator Mounts a Crusade". The New York Times.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Epic Games.
  • Official website

February 16, 2024
epic, games, american, video, game, software, developer, publisher, based, cary, north, carolina, company, founded, sweeney, potomac, computer, systems, 1991, originally, located, parents, house, potomac, maryland, following, first, commercial, video, game, re. Epic Games Inc is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary North Carolina The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991 originally located in his parents house in Potomac Maryland Following its first commercial video game release ZZT 1991 the company became Epic MegaGames Inc in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein who has been its vice president since After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999 the studio changed its name to Epic Games Epic Games Inc Headquarters in Cary North Carolina 2016FormerlyPotomac Computer Systems 1991 1992 Epic MegaGames Inc 1992 1999 Company typePrivateIndustryVideo gamesFounded1991 33 years ago 1991 in Potomac Maryland USFounderTim SweeneyHeadquartersCary North Carolina USArea servedWorldwideKey peopleTim Sweeney CEO Kim Libreri CTO Mark Rein VP Adam Sussman president Charlie Wen CCO ProductsUnreal EngineBink VideoEpic Games StoreUnreal seriesGears of War seriesFortniteOwnersTim Sweeney 51 4 Tencent 40 Sony 5 4 Kirkbi A S 3 2 Number of employees4 000 2023 1 SubsidiariesSee Subsidiaries and divisionsWebsiteepicgames wbr comFootnotes references 2 3 4 Epic Games developed Unreal Engine a commercially available game engine which also powers its internally developed video games like Fortnite and the Unreal Gears of War and Infinity Blade series In 2014 Unreal Engine was named the most successful videogame engine by Guinness World Records 5 Epic Games owns the game developers Psyonix Mediatonic and Harmonix and operates studios in multiple locations around the world While Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder Tencent acquired a 48 4 outstanding stake equating to 40 of total Epic in the company in 2012 as part of an agreement aimed at moving Epic towards a games as a service model Following the release of the popular Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017 the company gained additional investments that enabled it to expand its Unreal Engine offerings establish esports events around Fortnite and launch the Epic Games Store As of April 2022 the company has a US 32 billion equity valuation On August 13 2020 Epic released a version of Fortnite that included a permanent discount on V bucks across all platforms except iOS and Android devices if they purchased directly through Epic bypassing Apple and Google s storefronts Both Apple and Google immediately delisted the game for violating the storefronts terms of service by including their own storefront which led Epic to file lawsuits against both companies the same day accusing them of antitrust behavior in how they operate their app stores While Apple was ultimately victorious in a bench trial in September 2021 and upheld through appeals Google s actions were found to be monopolistic by a jury trial in December 2023 Contents 1 History 1 1 Potomac Computer Systems 1991 1992 1 2 Epic MegaGames 1992 1999 1 3 Epic Games 1999 present 1 3 1 Unreal and personal computer games 1999 2006 1 3 2 Gears of War and console games 2006 2012 1 3 3 Games as a service and Tencent shareholding 2012 2018 1 3 4 Fortnite success 2018 present 2 Acquisitions 3 Products 3 1 Video games 3 2 Unreal Engine 3 3 Epic Games Store 3 4 Epic Online Services 3 5 Productivity products 4 Subsidiaries and divisions 4 1 Locations 4 2 Subsidiaries 4 3 Former 5 Legal issues 5 1 Litigation with Silicon Knights 5 2 Apple and Google disputes 5 3 FTC child privacy settlement 6 Criticism 7 Notes 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External linksHistoryPotomac Computer Systems 1991 1992 Potomac Computer Systems was founded by Tim Sweeney in 1991 6 At the time Sweeney was studying mechanical engineering and living in a dorm at the University of Maryland He frequently visited his parents who lived in nearby Potomac Maryland where his personal computer used for both work and leisure was situated 6 Out of this location Sweeney started Potomac Computer Systems as a computer consulting business but later figured that it would be too much work he would have to put into keeping the business stable and scrapped the idea 6 After finishing his game ZZT Sweeney opted to re use the Potomac Computer Systems name to release the game to the public in January 1991 6 7 It was only with the unexpected success of ZZT caused in most part by the easy modifiability of the game using Sweeney s custom ZZT oop programming language 8 that made Sweeney consider turning Potomac Computer Systems into a video game company 6 ZZT was sold through bulletin board systems while all orders were fulfilled by Sweeney s father Paul Sweeney 9 The game sold several thousand copies as of May 2009 and Paul Sweeney still lived at the former Potomac Computer Systems address at the time fulfilling all orders that eventually came by mail 6 9 The final copy of ZZT was shipped by Paul Sweeney in November 2013 9 Epic MegaGames 1992 1999 nbsp Epic Games founder and CEO Tim SweeneyIn early 1992 Sweeney found himself and his new found video game company in a business where larger studios such as Apogee Software and id Software were dominant and he had to find a more serious name for his 6 As such Sweeney came up with Epic MegaGames a name which incorporated Epic and Mega to make it sound like it represented a fairly large company such as Apogee Software although he was its only employee 6 Sweeney soon underwent searching for a business partner and eventually caught up with Mark Rein who previously quit his job at id Software and moved to Toronto Ontario 8 6 Rein worked remotely from Toronto and primarily handled sales marketing and publishing deals business development that Sweeney found to have significantly contributed to the company s growth 6 Some time this season the company soon had 20 employees consisting of programmers artists designers and composers 10 Among them was the 17 year old Cliff Bleszinski who joined the company after submitting his game Dare to Dream to Sweeney 11 The following year they had over 30 employees 12 In 1996 Epic MegaGames produced a shareware isometric shooter called Fire Fight developed by Polish studio Chaos Works It was published by Electronic Arts 13 By 1997 Epic MegaGames had 50 people working for them worldwide 14 In 1998 Epic MegaGames released Unreal a 3D first person shooter co developed with Digital Extremes which expanded into a series of Unreal games The company also began to license the core technology the Unreal Engine to other game developers 15 Epic Games 1999 present Unreal and personal computer games 1999 2006 In February 1999 Epic MegaGames announced that they had moved their headquarters to a new location in Cary North Carolina and would henceforth be known as simply Epic Games 16 Rein explained that Unreal was first created by developers who were scattered across the world eventually the team came together to finish the game and that s when the real magic started The move to North Carolina centralizes Epic bringing all of the company s talented developers under one roof 16 Furthermore Sweeney stated that the Mega part of the name was dropped because they no longer wanted to pretend to be a big company as was the original intention of the name when it was a one man team 6 The follow up game Unreal Tournament shipped to critical acclaim the same year 17 at which point the studio had 13 employees 18 The company launched the Make Something Unreal competition in 2004 aiming to reward video game developers who create mods using the Unreal game engine Tripwire Interactive won US 80 000 in cash and computer hardware prizes over the course of the contest in the first contest in 2004 19 20 Gears of War and console games 2006 2012 Around 2006 the personal computer video game market was struggling with copyright infringement in the form of software piracy and it became difficult to make single player games elements that had been part of Epic s business model to that point The company decided to shift focus into developing console systems a move which Sweeney called the start of the third major iteration of the company Epic 3 0 21 In 2006 Epic released the Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War which became a commercial success for the company grossing about 100 million off a 12 million budget 22 21 A year later the company released Unreal Tournament 3 for PC and acquired a majority share in People Can Fly 23 24 In 2008 Epic Games released Gears of War 2 25 selling over three million copies within the first month of its release 26 Epic Games released on September 1 2010 Epic Citadel as a tech demo to demonstrate the Unreal Engine 3 running on Apple iOS within Adobe Flash Player Stage3D and using HTML5 WebGL technologies It was also released for Android on January 29 2013 Epic Games worked on an iOS game Infinity Blade 27 which was released on December 9 2010 28 The third game in the series Gears of War 3 came out in 2011 29 In 2011 Epic s subsidiary Titan Studios was dissolved 30 At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards Epic Games announced their new game Fortnite 31 In June 2012 Epic announced that it was opening up a new studio Epic Baltimore made up of members of 38 Studios Big Huge Games 32 Epic Baltimore was renamed to Impossible Studios in August 2012 33 However the studio ended up closing its doors in February 2013 34 35 Epic fully acquired People Can Fly in August 2012 rebranding them as Epic Games Poland in November 2013 as they began work on Fortnite alongside Epic 36 Epic alongside People Can Fly made one last game in the Gears of War series that served as a prequel to the other games Gears of War Judgement which was released in 2013 At this point Epic had considered developing a fourth main title for Gears of War but estimated that its budget would be at least 100 million 22 Additionally they had suggested the idea of a multiplayer only version of Gears of War that featured improved versions of maps based on user feedback similar to the concept behind Unreal Tournament but Microsoft rejected this idea Epic recognized the troubles of being held to the business objectives of a publisher and began to shift the company again 21 Games as a service and Tencent shareholding 2012 2018 source source source source source source source source track An inside look at Epic Games 2015Coupled with their desire to move away from being beholden to a publisher Epic Games observed that the video game industry was shifting to a games as a service model GaaS Sweeney stated There was an increasing realization that the old model wasn t working anymore and that the new model was looking increasingly like the way to go 21 In an attempt to gain more GaaS experience they made an agreement with Chinese Tencent who had several games under their banner including Riot Games League of Legends operating successfully as games as a service 37 In exchange for Tencent s help Tencent acquired approximately 48 4 of Epic then issued share capital equating to 40 of total Epic inclusive of both stock and employee stock options for 330 million in June 2012 Tencent Holdings has the right to nominate directors to the board of Epic Games and thus counts as an associate of the Group 3 However Sweeney stated that Tencent otherwise has very little control on the creative output of Epic Games 21 Sweeney considered the partial acquisition by Tencent as the start of Epic 4 0 the fourth major iteration of the company allowing the company to be more agile in the video game marketplace 21 38 Around this point Epic had about 200 employees 21 A number of high profile staff left the company months after the Tencent deal was announced for various reasons Some notable departures included 39 Cliff Bleszinski then the design director announced he was leaving Epic Games in October 2012 after 20 years with the company His official reason was It s time for a much needed break 40 Bleszinski later stated that he had become jaded about the gaming industry in the lead up to Tencent s involvement After Tencent s investment Bleszinski attempted to renegotiate his contract but failed to come to terms making him think about retirement instead He opted to stop coming to work spending his time at his beach house eventually leading Sweeney to come down and have a heart to heart discussion with Bleszinski on the new direction Epic was going and asking him to make a firm decision regarding his commitment to Epic Bleszinski opted to write his resignation letter the next day 41 After about two years Bleszinski started Boss Key Productions in 2014 citation needed President Mike Capps announced his retirement in December 2012 and cited as reasons the birth of a baby boy he was having with his wife and his plans to be a stay at home dad 42 He subsequently announced quitting his advisory role as well as his affiliation with the company in March 2013 43 Rod Fergusson who had been a lead developer for the Gears of War series left Epic in August 2012 Fergusson stated that he had seen the direction that the Tencent acquisition would have taken the company and was not interested in the free to play style of games but instead wanted to continue developing a AAA big narrative big story big impact game 44 Fergusson briefly joined Irrational Games owned by 2K Games to help complete BioShock Infinite While there Fergusson talked with 2K about potentially continuing the Gears of War series leading to talks between 2K Games Epic and Microsoft 21 As a result Microsoft acquired the rights to Gears of War on January 27 2014 eventually assigned those to Microsoft Game Studios Fergusson moved to Black Tusk Studios owned by Microsoft Game Studios to take on lead development for a new Gears title with the studio being rebranded as The Coalition The first game since the acquisition Gears of War 4 was released in October 2016 45 46 Adrian Chmielarz the founder of People Can Fly who joined Epic when his studio was acquired earlier in 2012 decided to leave after Tencent s acquisition stating that he and other former People Can Fly members did not believe the free to play games as a service direction fit their own personal vision or direction they wanted to go Chmielarz and these others left Epic in late 2012 to form The Astronauts 41 Lee Perry a lead designer on both Unreal and Gears of War series felt that Epic has started to grow too large to maintain a role as an eccentric game developer Coupled with the studio s need for more management to support the games as a service model Perry felt that their creative freedom would become limited He and five other senior people left Epic to form a new studio Bitmonster 41 Epic continued its goal to deliver games as a service following these departures Fortnite was to serve as their testbed for living games but with the shifts in staff and its engine from Unreal Engine 3 to 4 its release suffered some setbacks Epic started additional projects the free to play and community developed Unreal Tournament first announced in 2014 47 48 and the free to play multiplayer online battle arena game Paragon launched in 2016 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 49 Epic also released a remastered version of Shadow Complex for newer consoles and computers in 2015 50 51 and their first foray into virtual reality with the release of Robo Recall for the Oculus Rift 52 53 The investment infusion from Tencent allowed Epic Games to relicense the Unreal Engine 4 engine in March 2015 to be free for all users to develop with with Epic taking 5 royalties on games developed with the engine 54 In June 2015 Epic agreed to allow Epic Games Poland s departure from the company and sold its shares in the studio the studio reverted to their former name People Can Fly The Bulletstorm IP was retained by People Can Fly who has since launched a remastered version called Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition on April 7 2017 published by Gearbox Software 55 56 Fortnite success 2018 present nbsp Epic s Fortnite exhibition space at E3 2018By July 2017 Fortnite was finally in a state for public play 57 Epic launched the title through a paid early access then with a full free to play release expected in 2018 58 Following on the popularity of PlayerUnknown s Battlegrounds a battle royale game released earlier in 2017 Epic developed a variant of Fortnite called Fortnite Battle Royale which was released in September 2017 59 as a free to play title across computer console and mobile platforms Fortnite Battle Royale quickly gained an audience amassing over 125 million players by May 2018 with estimates of having earned over 1 billion by July 2018 through microtransactions including its battle pass system Epic Games which had been valued at around 825 million at the time of Tencent s acquisition was estimated to be worth 4 5 billion in July 2018 due to Fortnite Battle Royale and expected to surpass 8 5 billion by the end of 2018 with projected growth of the game 60 Player count continued to expand when Epic broke new ground by convincing Sony to change its stance on cross platform play allowing players on any device to compete with each other in Fortnite Battle Royale 61 Fortnite has drawn nearly 250 million players as of March 2019 62 Fortnite s commercial success enabled Epic to make several changes to its other product offerings In July 2018 it reduced the revenue cut that it took for assets sold on the Unreal Engine Marketplace from 30 to 12 63 Epic launched the Epic Games Store digital storefront to compete with services like Steam and GOG com not only taking a 12 cut of revenue compared to the industry standard of 30 but also eliminated the 5 cut for games using the Unreal engine sold via the storefront 64 However the company also refocused its development efforts to provide more support for Unreal and Fortnite by ending support for Paragon 65 and Unreal Tournament 66 The financial success of Fortnite brought additional investment into Epic Games Epic Games was one of eleven companies selected to be part of the Disney Accelerator program in 2017 providing Epic equity investment and access to some of Disney s executives and potential opportunity to work with Disney in the future Disney had selected both Epic and aXiomatic as potential leads in the growing esports arena 67 Epic s has used its windfall to support its products In January 2019 following a dispute between Improbable and Unity Technologies over changes to the acceptable uses of the Unity game engine Epic announced it was partnering with Improbable to launch a 25 million fund to help bring developers they believe affected by these changes towards solutions that are more open and would have fewer service compatibilities 68 Epic launched a 100 million prize pool in February 2019 for Fortnite related esports activities that it plans to run from 2019 onward 69 To expand its esports initiatives Epic Games hired Nate Nanzer from Blizzard Entertainment and their commissioner of the Overwatch League in May 2019 70 At the 2019 Game Developers Conference Epic announced it was launching a 100 million MegaGrants initiative allowing anyone to apply for up to 500 000 in funding to support game development using the Unreal Engine or for any project even if not directly games related that would benefit the Unreal Engine 71 One of the first major funded entities under this was the Blender Foundation in July 2019 having received 1 2 million from the MegaGrants funding to help them to improve and professionalize their Blender tools for 3D art creation 72 Epic Games was given the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Special Award in June 2019 for its past and continuing developments for the Unreal Engine 73 a software which also earned it the Engineering Excellence Award from the Hollywood Professional Association 74 Epic announced in March 2020 it was establishing a new multi platform publishing label Epic Games Publishing Alongside this the label had announced three deals with developers Remedy Entertainment Playdead and GenDesign in which Epic would fully fund development and publishing including employee salaries quality assurance localization and marketing of one or more games from each studio but leaving full creative control and IP rights to the studio and sharing profits following Epic s recouping of its investment 50 50 with the studio 75 76 The company expanded their publishing options in October 2021 with Spry Fox and Eyes Out 77 Unreal Engine 5 was announced on May 13 2020 with plans for an early 2022 release Alongside this announcement Epic released its Epic Online Services a free SDK toolset for online matchmaking and other similar cross platform play support features based on Fortnite Epic further waived all Unreal license fees retroactively for games up through the first 1 million in revenue regardless of how they were published retroactively starting from January 1 2020 78 Bloomberg reported that Epic was nearing a 17 billion valuation in June 2020 once it had completed a new 750 million investing round from its previous investors and newcomings T Rowe Price Group Inc and Baillie Gifford 79 The company partnered with Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros to acquire distribution rights for Inception Batman Begins and The Prestige as part of Movie Nite on Fortnite s Party Royale island The film live streams were based on a user s country 80 Across July and August Epic raised an additional 1 78 billion in capital investment bringing the company s post money equity valuation to 17 3 billion 81 82 This included a 250 million investment from Sony approximately a 1 4 stake in the company The deal continues the two companies technology collaboration after they had worked together on the development of Unreal Engine 5 but does not commit Epic to any exclusivity to the Sony PlayStation platform 83 84 Sweeney said that Sony had started talking with Epic about investing following the demonstration of the Unreal Engine 5 in May 2020 85 Epic purchased Cary Towne Center in Cary North Carolina in January 2021 which had been scheduled to be closed and demolished after 2020 to be their new headquarters and campus with the conversion to be complete by 2024 86 Epic unveiled its MetaHuman Creator project in February 2021 Based on the technology from 3Lateral Cubic Motion and Quixel the MetaHuman Creator is a browser based application to allow game developers to create realistic human characters within a short amount of time starting from various presets and then can be exported as pre made models and animation files ready for use in Unreal Engine 87 Epic announced a partnership with Cesium in March 2021 to bring its 3D geospatial data as a free add on into the Unreal Engine 88 In April 2021 Epic completed another 1 billion round of funding to support the company s long term vision for the metaverse putting the company s valuation at 28 7 billion The round of funding included another 200 million strategic investment from Sony 89 90 Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder with these additional investments 89 The Information reported that Epic Games was launching a new scripted entertainment division in October 2021 bringing on three former executives from Lucasfilm to manage it with initial plans for a Fortnite film 91 In February 2022 Epic Games announced that at least half a billion accounts have been created on its platform 92 Epic released the initial beta version of RealityScan a mobile app that uses the tools from Capturing Reality and Quixel in April 2022 RealityScan allows users to create 3D models that can be imported into Sketchfab using photos taken by the user 93 Epic received another 1 billion each from Sony and from Kirkbi the parent company of The Lego Group in April 2022 for continued support of building out Epic s metaverse 94 These investments gave Kirkbi 3 ownership and increased Sony s to 4 9 95 With these investments Epic had an estimated valuation of 32 billion 96 Epic and Lego also announced their partnership to build a child friendly space in the metaverse that same month 97 The company announced in September 2023 that it was laying off 870 employees along with divesting in Bandcamp to Songtradr and spinning off SuperAwesome into its own company Sweeney said this move was needed to rein in spending and did not anticipate there would be further layoffs in the future 98 Mediatonic reported a significant number of layoffs from their team but remained part of Epic 99 On February 7 2024 Epic Games received a 1 5 billion investment from The Walt Disney Company Disney plans to co develop new games and an entertainment universe encompassing its properties with Epic 100 AcquisitionsIn 2008 Epic acquired Utah based Chair Entertainment developer of Undertow 101 102 Summer 2009 saw the launch of Chair s Shadow Complex an adventure game inspired by the Metroid series 103 Epic announced in October 2018 that it had acquired 1 25 billion in investment from seven firms KKR ICONIQ Capital Smash Ventures aXiomatic Vulcan Capital Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed Venture Partners The firms join Tencent Disney and Endeavor as minority shareholders in Epic 104 105 With the investment Epic Games was estimated to have a nearly 15 billion valuation in October 2018 106 Besides expanding support for Fortnite and the Epic Games Store these investments allowed Epic to acquire additional firms In January 2018 it was announced that Epic had acquired Cloudgine a developer of cloud based gaming software 107 The company also announced the acquisition of Kamu a firm that offered anti cheat software called Easy Anti Cheat in October 2018 108 109 A year later in January 2019 Epic acquired 3Lateral and Agog Labs 3Lateral is known for its digital human creations using a combination of digital technology motion capture and other tools to create photo realistic human subjects in real time Epic plans to add some of 3Lateral s features to the Unreal Engine 110 Agog had developed SkookumScript a platform for scripting events in video games on the announcement of this acquisition Agog stated they will stop the development of SkookumScript to work more on Unreal Engine scripting support 111 Epic acquired Psyonix the developer of Rocket League in May 2019 Epic and Psyonix have had a past history as Psyonix was originally founded a few miles from Epic s headquarters and had contributed to Epic s Unreal Tournament 112 113 Besides ongoing support for Rocket League Psyonix developed an arcade style car racing game inside of Fortnite named Rocket Racing which was added in December 2023 114 Epic acquired the Twinmotion visualization tool used in architectural design in May 2019 from Abvent and which they plan to expand and incorporate into their Unreal Engine offerings 115 116 Epic acquired Life on Air the developers behind Houseparty a social networking service in June 2019 The monetary terms of the acquisition were not disclosed 117 Epic later shuttered Houseparty s app in October 2021 though the team behind it was continuing to develop social apps for Epic s platforms 118 In November 2019 Epic acquired Quixel the world s largest photogrammetry asset library which makes 3D models of objects based on real world high definition photography Epic plans to open Quixel s existing library of models to users of Unreal Engine while the Quixel staff will continue to build out its assets within Epic 119 120 The company acquired Cubic Motion a studio that provides highly detailed digital facial animations for both films and video games in March 2020 121 Epic acquired SuperAwesome a firm that has developed services to support children safe games and services around games in September 2020 as to incorporate these elements more into Epic s portfolio and to offer to other developers particularly for games built around Epic s vision of metaverse games 122 123 Epic acquired the digital facial animation firm Hyprsense in November 2020 124 In January 2021 Epic acquired RAD Game Tools a company that makes a variety of middleware solutions for video game development which Epic plans to incorporate into the Unreal Engine RAD s tools will still remain available outside of Unreal as well 125 In March 2021 Epic announced it was acquiring the Tonic Games Group which includes developers Mediatonic and Fortitude Games Mediatonic s Fall Guys a major success during 2020 would remain available on Steam while Epic would help to bring it to additional platforms 126 Epic buying Tonic Games Group falls under the company s broader plans of creating its own metaverse 127 Additionally in March Epic acquired Capturing Reality the developers of RealityCapture a photogrammetry suite that can create 3D models from numerous photographs Epic plans to integrate RealityCapture into the Unreal Engine 128 Epic Games acquired ArtStation a professional artists marketplace in April 2021 As part of the acquisition ArtStation members would gain access to Epic s tools and support such as the Unreal Engine while the ArtStation marketplace will reduce its take on purchases from 30 to 12 129 In July 2021 Epic acquired Sketchfab a marketplace for 3D models As with ArtStation the acquisition allowed Sketchfab to reduce its pricing structure lowering its revenue cut on purchases to 12 and making their Sketchfab Plus level of membership free 130 In November 2021 Epic Games acquired Harmonix a music game developer for undisclosed terms 131 Harmonix continued to support their existing games including Rock Band 4 and Fuser while building out Fortnite s musical experiences adding a Fortnite Festival mode that mimics the note matching gameplay of Rock Band in December 2023 114 and Epic s larger metaverse plans 132 Epic acquired the indie music platform Bandcamp in March 2022 Bandcamp was expected to remain independently operated under Epic while gaining the benefits of Epic s backend services 133 134 In April 2023 Epic acquired Brazilian studio Aquiris and changed its name to Epic Games Brasil with the intention to be used in Fortnite 135 In September 2023 Epic sold Bandcamp to music licensing company Songtradr 136 ProductsVideo games Main article List of games by Epic Games Epic Games is known for games such as ZZT developed by founder Tim Sweeney various shareware titles including Jazz Jackrabbit and Epic Pinball the Unreal video game series which is used as a showcase for its Unreal Engine the Gears of War series which is now owned by The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios Infinity Blade Shadow Complex Bulletstorm and Fortnite citation needed Unreal Engine Main article Unreal Engine Epic is the proprietor of five successful game engines in the video game industry Each Unreal Engine has a complete feature set of graphical rendering sound processing and physics that can be widely adapted to fit the specific needs of a game developer that does not want to code their own engine from scratch The five engines Epic has created are Unreal Engine 1 Unreal Engine 2 including its 2 5 and 2 X releases Unreal Engine 3 Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 Epic also provides support to the Unreal marketplace a digital storefront for creators to sell Unreal assets to other developers Further since 2019 Epic has provided support for filmmakers which have utilized the Unreal Engine to create virtual sets for productions such as The Mandalorian 137 and will be backing major animated feature film production using Unreal starting with Gilgamesh with studios Hook Up DuermeVela and FilmSharks 138 Epic Games Store Main article Epic Games Store Epic announced its own Epic Games Store an open digital storefront for games on December 4 2018 which launched a few days later with The Game Awards 2018 presentation Differing from Valve s Steam storefront which takes 30 of revenues 30 70 revenue sharing agreement from the sale of a game the Epic Game Store will take 12 as well as foregoing the 5 for games developed in the Unreal Engine anticipating that these lower revenue sharing agreements will draw developers to it 139 140 Epic Online Services Epic Online Services is a free SDK based on Epic s Fortnite code that allows developers to implement cross platform play features in their games including matchmaking friends lists leaderboards and achievements with support for Windows macOS PlayStation 4 Xbox One Nintendo Switch iOS and Android systems It was first released for all in May 2020 78 Support for anti cheat and voice chat was added in June 2021 141 Productivity products Other productivity products include ArtStation Sketchfab Twinmotion RealityCapture RealityScan and Quixel Epic and Autodesk partnered in September 2022 making Twinmotion available to Revit subscribers 142 The MetaHuman Creator is a project based on technology from three companies acquired by Epic 3Lateral Cubic Motion and Quixel to allow developers to quickly create realistic human characters that can then be exported for use within Unreal 143 Through partnership with Cesium Epic plans to offer a free plugin to provide 3D geospatial data for Unreal users allowing them to recreate any part of the mapped surface of Earth 144 Epic will include RealityCapture a product it acquired with its acquisition of Capturing Reality that can generate 3D models of any object from a collection of photographs taken of it from multiple angles 145 and the various middleware tools offered by Epic Game Tools Subsidiaries and divisionsLocations Name Location Founded Acquired Ref s Epic Games Australia Burwood Australia 2018 146 Epic Games Brasil Porto Alegre Brazil 2007 2023 147 Epic Games China a Shanghai China 2006 148 Epic Games Germany Berlin Germany 2016 149 150 Epic Games Japan Yokohama Japan 2010 151 152 153 Epic Games Korea Seoul South Korea 2009 154 155 Epic Games Montreal Montreal Canada 2018 156 Epic Games Publishing 2020 157 Epic Games Seattle Bellevue Washington US 2012 158 159 160 Epic Games Stockholm Stockholm Sweden 2018 161 Epic Games San Francisco San Francisco California US 2012Epic Games UK b Sunderland England 2014 162 163 164 Subsidiaries Name Area Location Founded Acquired Ref s 3Lateral Motion capture digitization Novi Sad Serbia 2008 2019 110 ArtStation Professional artist marketplace Montreal Canada 2014 2021 129 Capturing Reality Photogrammetry software Bratislava Slovakia 2015 2021 128 Cubic Motion Facial animation Manchester England 2009 2020 121 Harmonix Music game developer Boston Massachusetts 1995 2021 131 Psyonix Video game development San Diego US 2000 2019 112 113 Quixel Photogrammetry assets Uppsala Sweden 2011 2019 119 120 Epic Game Tools formerly RAD Game Tools Game middleware Bellevue Washington 1988 2021 125 Sketchfab 3D model marketplace Paris France 2012 2021 130 Tonic Games Group Mediatonic Video game development London England 2005 2021 126 Former Name Location Founded Acquired Divested Fate Ref Agog Labs Vancouver Canada 2013 2019 Software development moved internally to Epic Games 111 Bandcamp Oakland US 2008 2022 2023 Sold to Songtradr 133 Chair Entertainment Salt Lake City US 2005 2008 Unknown ClosedCloudgine Edinburgh Scotland 2012 2018 Software development moved internally to Epic Games 107 Hyprsense Burlingame California 2015 2020 Software development moved internally to Epic Games Impossible Studios Baltimore US 2012 2013 Closed 165 Kamu Helsinki Finland 2013 2018 Software development moved internally to Epic Games Life on Air San Francisco US 2012 2019 Software development moved internally to Epic Games People Can Fly Epic Games Poland Warsaw Poland 2002 2012 2015 Sold to management 166 RAD Games Tools Kirkland Washington US 1988 2021 Software development moved internally to Epic Games SuperAwesome London England 2013 2020 2023 Spun off 122 Legal issuesSee also Fortnite Battle Royale Past and ongoing concerns Litigation with Silicon Knights On July 19 2007 Canadian game studio Silicon Knights sued Epic Games for failure to provide a working game engine causing the Ontario based game developer to experience considerable losses 167 The suit alleged that Epic Games was sabotaging Unreal Engine 3 licensees Epic s licensing document stated that a working version of the engine would be available within six months of the Xbox 360 developer kits being released Silicon Knights claimed that Epic missed this deadline and that when a working version of the engine was eventually released the documentation was insufficient The game studio also claimed Epic had withheld vital improvements to the game engine claiming they were game specific while also using licensing fees to fund the development of its own titles rather than the engine itself 168 In August 2007 Epic Games counter sued Silicon Knights alleging the studio was aware when it signed on that certain features of Unreal Engine 3 were still in development and that components would continue to be developed and added as Epic completed work on Gears of War Therefore in a statement Epic said that SK knew when it committed to the licensing agreement that Unreal Engine 3 may not meet its requirements and may not be modified to meet them 169 Additionally the counter suit claimed that Silicon Knights had made unauthorized use of Epic s Licensed Technology and had infringed and otherwise violated Epic s intellectual property rights including Epic s copyrighted works trade secrets know how and confidential information by incorporating Unreal Engine 3 code into its own engine the Silicon Knights Engine 169 Furthermore Epic asserted the Canadian developer broke the contract when it employed this derivative work in an internal title and a second game with Sega 170 a partnership for which it never received a license fee 171 On May 30 2012 Epic Games defeated Silicon Knights lawsuit and won its counter suit for 4 45 million on grounds of copyright infringement misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract 172 an injury award that was later doubled due to prejudgment interest attorneys fees and costs 173 Consistent with Epic s counterclaims the presiding judge James C Dever III stated that Silicon Knights had deliberately and repeatedly copied thousands of lines of Epic Games copyrighted code and then attempted to conceal its wrongdoing by removing Epic Games copyright notices and by disguising Epic Games copyrighted code as Silicon Knights own 173 Dever stated that evidence against Silicon Knights was overwhelming as it not only copied functional code but also non functional internal comments Epic Games programmers had left for themselves 173 As a result on November 7 2012 Silicon Knights was directed by the court to destroy all game code derived from Unreal Engine 3 all information from licensee restricted areas of Epic s Unreal Engine documentation website and to permit Epic Games access to the company s servers and other devices to ensure these items have been removed In addition the studio was instructed to recall and destroy all unsold retail copies of games built with Unreal Engine 3 code including Too Human X Men Destiny The Sandman The Box Ritualyst and Siren in the Maelstrom the latter three titles were projects never released or even officially announced 174 On May 16 2014 Silicon Knights filed for bankruptcy and a Certificate of Appointment was issued by the office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy with Collins Barrow Toronto Limited being appointed as trustee in bankruptcy 175 Apple and Google disputes Main articles Epic Games v Apple and Epic Games v Google Since as early as 2017 Tim Sweeney had questioned the need for digital storefronts like Valve s Steam Apple s iOS App Store and Google Play to take a 30 revenue sharing cut and argued that when accounting for current rates of content distribution and other factors needed a revenue cut of 8 should be sufficient to run any digital storefront profitably 176 When Epic brought Fortnite Battle Royale to mobile devices the company initially offered a sideloaded package for Android systems to bypass the Google Play store but eventually also made it a store app 177 178 179 On August 13 2020 Epic Games updated Fortnite across all platforms including the iOS and Android versions to reduce the price of V Bucks the in game currency by 20 if they purchased directly from Epic For iOS and Android users if they purchased through the Apple or Google storefront they were not given this discount as Epic said they could not extend the discount due to the 30 revenue cut taken by Apple and Google 180 Within hours both Apple and Google had removed Fortnite from their storefronts stating the means of bypassing their payment systems violated the terms of service 181 182 Epic immediately filed separate lawsuits against Apple and Google for antitrust and anticompetitive behavior in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California 183 Epic did not seek monetary damages in either case but instead was seeking injunctive relief to allow fair competition in these two key markets that directly affect hundreds of millions of consumers and tens of thousands if not more of third party app developers 184 In comments on social media the next day Sweeney said that they undertook the actions as we re fighting for the freedom of people who bought smartphones to install apps from sources of their choosing the freedom for creators of apps to distribute them as they choose and the freedom of both groups to do business directly The primary opposing argument is Smartphone markers sic can do whatever they want This is an awful notion We all have rights and we need to fight to defend our rights against whoever would deny them 185 Apple responded to the lawsuit that it would terminate Epic s developer accounts by August 28 2020 leading Epic to file a motion for a preliminary injunction to force Apple to return Fortnite to the App Store and prevent them from terminating Epic s developer accounts as the latter action would leave Epic unable to update the Unreal Engine for any changes to iOS or macOS and leave developers that relied on Unreal at risk 186 187 The court granted the preliminary injunction against Apple from terminating the developer accounts as Epic had shown potential significant damage to both the Unreal Engine platform itself and to the gaming industry generally but refused to grant the injunction related to Fortnite as The current predicament appears of Epic s own making 188 In September 2020 Epic Games together with thirteen other companies launched the Coalition for App Fairness which aimed for better conditions for the inclusion of apps into app stores 189 U S District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued her first ruling on Epic Games v Apple on September 10 2021 190 Rogers found in favor of Apple on nine of ten counts brought up against them in the case including Epic s charges related to Apple s 30 revenue cut and Apple s prohibition against third party marketplaces on the iOS environment 191 Rogers did rule against Apple on the final charge related to anti steering provisions and issued a permanent injunction that in 90 days from the ruling blocked Apple from preventing developers from linking app users to other storefronts from within apps to complete purchases or from collecting information within an app such as an email to notify users of these storefronts 192 193 Rogers ruling was upheld at the Ninth Circuit on appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case leaving Rogers order against Apple in place 194 Google initially sought to negotiate with Epic but later filed their own countersuit against Epic for breach of contract The Google case was set as a jury trial held in November and December 2023 Prior to this other groups had filed their own lawsuits against Google for similar reasons as Epic including a coalition of states and the Match Group but these were settled just ahead of the trial 195 196 The jury found for Epic on all claims made determining that Google maintained a monopoly on the Android marketplace by how it managed the Play Store and used its leverage as a big tech firm to make deal with partners including some deals made as a result of the earlier settlements A second phase of this trial to determine remedies is scheduled to occur in January 2024 197 FTC child privacy settlement In December 2022 Epic Games was fined a combined 520 million after the Federal Trade Commission accused the company of separate accounts related to Fortnite one for violating COPPA related to children s privacy by collecting personal data without parent or guardian consent exposing children and teens to potential harassment and a second related to misleading users into making unwanted purchases while playing the game 198 199 200 201 Epic Games said No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here The laws have not changed but their application has evolved and long standing industry practices are no longer enough We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players Over the past few years we ve been making changes to ensure our ecosystem meets the expectations of our players and regulators which we hope will be a helpful guide for others in our industry 202 CriticismSince the partial investment by the Chinese company Tencent some consumers have become wary of Epic Games reliability and use of their data particularly in relationship with the Epic Games Store These concerns have been connected to broader issues of general distrust of the Chinese government and Chinese corporations among some Western video game players Epic has stated that Tencent does not have access to any of this private data nor provides this to the Chinese government 203 204 In late March 2020 accusations began circulating on social media that the Epic Games social networking app Houseparty led to other services such as Netflix and Spotify being hacked However both Epic and Life on Air claimed this was a smear campaign against its product and offered a 1 million bounty for anyone able to substantiate their claim 205 206 207 Notes Additional studio in Suzhou Additional studios in Guildford Leamington Spa and NewcastleReferences Stewart Marcus September 28 2023 Epic Games Lays Off Over 800 Employees Game Informer Retrieved January 10 2024 Crecente Brian July 25 2018 How a 2012 Decision Helped Fortnite Make Epic Games a Billion Dollar Company Variety Archived from the original on July 25 2018 Retrieved July 26 2018 a b Crecente Brian March 21 2013 Tencent s 330M Epic Games investment absorbed 40 percent of developer Updated Polygon Archived from the original on August 20 2016 Retrieved August 24 2016 Crecente Brian March 29 2019 Fortnite Creator Sees Epic Games Becoming as Big as Facebook Google Variety Archived from the original on March 29 2019 Retrieved March 30 2019 Most successful videogame engine Guinness World Records Archived from the original on December 22 2015 a b c d e f g h i j k Edwards Benj May 25 2009 From The Past To 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Kerr Chris March 26 2020 Epic signs Playdead Remedy and genDesign to new publishing label Gamasutra Archived from the original on March 26 2020 Retrieved March 26 2020 Skrebels Joe October 20 2021 Epic Announces New Publishing Partners Including Nine Inch Nails Guitarist s Studio IGN Archived from the original on October 20 2021 Retrieved October 20 2021 a b Valentine Rebekah May 13 2020 Epic Games announces Unreal Engine 5 with first PS5 footage GamesIndustry biz Archived from the original on May 20 2020 Retrieved May 13 2020 Roof Katie Tan Gillian Baker Liana Kharif Olga June 15 2020 Fortnite Maker Epic Games Nears Funding at 17 Billion Value Bloomberg News Archived from the original on June 16 2020 Retrieved June 16 2020 Spangler Todd June 24 2020 Fortnite Will Livestream Christopher Nolan s Inception Two Other Movies for Free Variety Archived from the original on November 18 2020 Retrieved October 16 2020 Kerr Chris August 6 2020 Fortnite developer Epic Games secures 1 78 billion 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fidelity humans Gamasutra Archived from the original on February 10 2021 Retrieved February 10 2021 Takahashi Dean March 30 2021 Epic Games teams up with Cesium to bring 3D geospatial data to Unreal Venture Beat Archived from the original on March 30 2021 Retrieved March 30 2021 a b Fortnite maker Epic Games gets 28 7 billion valuation in latest funding Reuters April 13 2021 Archived from the original on April 13 2021 Retrieved April 13 2021 Kerr Chris April 13 2021 Epic nets 1 billion in funding including 200 million investment from Sony Gamasutra Archived from the original on April 13 2021 Retrieved April 13 2021 Phillips Tom October 11 2021 Epic mulls Fortnite movie as it launches entertainment division Eurogamer Archived from the original on October 11 2021 Retrieved October 11 2021 Epic Games Store le nombre impressionnant de comptes devoile jeuxvideo fr in French February 17 2022 Retrieved February 25 2022 Peters Jay April 4 2022 Epic s new RealityScan app can make 3D models from 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on March 31 2020 Retrieved March 31 2020 Griffin Andrew March 31 2020 Lots of people are saying you should delete Houseparty right now But should you The Independent Archived from the original on April 2 2020 Retrieved March 31 2020 Further readingKeighley Geoffrey Blinded By Reality The True Story Behind the Creation of Unreal GameSpot Archived from the original on May 19 2001 Berardini Cesar A June 30 2005 Everything You Wanted to Know About Unreal TeamXbox Archived from the original on July 3 2005 Porter Will October 26 2007 The Epic tradition GamesRadar Blancato Joe May 13 2008 Epic s Rainmakers The Escapist Archived from the original on June 3 2020 Retrieved September 4 2019 Edwards Benj May 25 2009 From The Past To The Future Tim Sweeney Talks Gamasutra Totilo Stephen December 7 2011 The Quiet Tinkerer Who Makes Games Beautiful Finally Gets His Due Kotaku Plante Chris April 2 2012 Better with age A history of Epic Games Polygon Freeman Will August 12 2013 Development Legends An Unreal tale MCV Crecente Brian May 1 2016 Their future is Epic The evolution of a gaming giant Polygon Huddleston Tom Jr August 9 2018 Fortnite launched battle royale a year ago today here s how the company behind the billion dollar game was founded by a college kid CNBC Griffith Erin August 25 2020 To Fight Apple and Google s Grip Fortnite Creator Mounts a Crusade The New York Times External links nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Epic Games Official website Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Epic Games amp oldid 1207513744, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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